The remaining members of the Order were truly professionals; it wasn’t long before they were gathered in organized files at the edge of the forest, the Agis castle prominent in the horizon.

The sight of his home brought forth feelings of both warmth and chagrin to Vedas heart, but he crushed his emotions, there were more important matters to consider.

He directed his new snow white horse to the front with Erling behind him, the Lunari steeds were famed for their speed, but Vedas always considered how comfortable they felt to the touch their strongest trait.

They were clearly able to see the enemy camps, the castle was much too small to house all their mercenaries, and so while Chrismund hosted the knights, he left the sellswords to reside outside the walls.

“Listen up knights!” He made liberal use of magic to make sure his voice was projected. “Shock and awe! Those words way as well be carved into your eyelids! We’ll besiege the castle and lead a spear that will get rid of the enemy leadership once for all!”

While Vedas was informing the troops of their strategy, his Halo glowed with ethereal light, and the knights found crystal bands appear on their hands, glowing ethereal runes glowing on their surface.

“This is usually the time where I’ll regale you with a speech for the ages! Giving the demoralized troops the necessary courage to face insurmountable obstacles and formidable enemies! But not today, because with your strength and skill, and my support, we’ll frankly make easy work out of these pretenders.” His comments provoked some chuckles here and there.

“Your new armbands are enchanted to make you stronger, faster, and more enduring. So every one of you better take down ten men before even considering giving up! That’s all I have to say people, let’s kill those motherfuckers!”

This was supposed to be an ambush, so no one was stupid enough to scream like a buffoon and give up their position, but the whole contingent sported determined expressions as they moved with blinding speed, the Lunari Steeds living up to their reputation as one of the fastest breeds out there.”

They quickly and surely approached the castle, where one of the sentries got spooked by the trembling ground, and swerved his eyes to see the quickly approaching cavalry.

Sir Erling’s supernatural perception allowed him to be the first to notice, and he quickly held the handle of his sword. But before he could even unsheathe it, he was momentarily blinded by a ray of light from his right by a ray of light, before he saw the sentry falling down, his head nowhere to be seen.

He shifted his gaze to Vedas, a crystal pointed cylinder protruding out of his Halo, who gave him a subtle wink and a smirk. The commander shook his head out of mirth, his hair still waving in the wind.

While all the sentries quickly faced similar fates, the Archwizard was able to detect and swiftly eliminate anyone who could have detected their ambush. They had made the decision to bypass all the mercenary camps, it wouldn’t do to waste valuable effort and inform their enemies while their target was inside the castle.

Erling was the first to greet the Iron Gate, and with a swift and humanly strong move, he unsheathed his sword and cut it down in twain. The sound of collapsing iron managed to alert the people inside, as the castle quickly echoed with the sound of panicking soldiers.

Deeming stealth no longer feasible, Vedas projected his voice to the denizens. “My name is Vedas Agis, the Archwizard of Light and owner of this castle! You either surrender and get the fuck out of my property, or I’ll gut each and every one of you to fucking pieces!”

The man had clearly no longer kept his anger restrained, the anger of his voice almost brought a shiver to Erling’s back, but he just grinned maliciously at the approaching warriors.

They wore red and yellow tinted armor, denoting them as one of Keston’s Knights.

Erling shifted a metaphysical muscle within his body, causing a shapeless pure white light to cover his silhouette and his sword. That same Aura –tinted with bloodlust- caused the enemy knight’s body to freeze in fright, their bodies realizing that they were in front of a predator that they could not hope to defeat.

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For bystanders, it seemed as if Erling and his horse were in front of the corridor a moment, and then the second at its end. The whole hall seemed as if it was cut in the middle, and as the horse continued on, all enemies that stood In front of him once found themselves cleaved in half.

Vedas meanwhile has abandoned his horse, his Halo shone over the castle of Agis, both it and its owner levitating above the fortress.

While the wizard thought he could singlehandedly end the conflict, he opted to let his knights run roughshod through their enemies. ‘It wouldn’t do to get used to having me as crutch, I just need to bridge the gap.’ He thought.

Indeed, while his Knights were all faring well against their opponents, Theodore and Erling most of all, there were quite a few cases where they were either outnumbered, or they had to face of the enemy’s more skilled warriors.

So he decided indirectly help them out, and the bracelets that he had equipped were linked with his focus, allowing him to project runic spells through his focus into their exact position.

And so injured knights found themselves healing abnormally fast, some getting slightly faster, just enough to dodge a debilitating blow, and ones with no opponents found themselves directed to the exact places they were needed by a floating arrow of light.

Keston clearly didn’t send any magic support, any user worth his salt would have at least warded the area with a detection array, Vedas himself would have used an anti-magic formation, made to weaken all enemy magic users. Not that it would have worked against him.

However, the flow of the battle shifted by the arrival of a gaudily armored knight, a red aura enveloping his body as he charged at a group of enemy knights. By the looks of it, while he wasn’t as strong as Erling –not even close- he was a Master swordsman in his own right.

“Tsk.” He clicked his tongue.

The bracelet in Theodore’s hand lit up. “Theodore, prepare yourself.” He looked at his hand, surprised. “Lord? Prepare for wha-.” His words were interrupted by the flying Halo that enveloped him, and in a flash of light, he found himself facing Sir Urith, who had frozen in his place, still enveloped in his aura, equally startled.

But he was a master, so in less than a second he had already swung his sword at Theodore, the speed of it causing a ringing sound to echo.

Theodore was much more shocked, however. If not for the shield of light that blocked Urith’s strike, then he would have definitely paid the price.

“That’s the only freebie I’m giving you, get to it now.” His lord’s voice echoed from his bracelet.

Theodore reacted quickly; he opted to ignore the bizarre situation for the moment in favor of dueling his opponent. He flexed his will, causing his sky blue aura to billow out of his body, and in a mighty clash, their swords collided with each other, the shockwave from the contact causing the surrounding dust to scatter.

Both Theodore and Urith are Aura Masters in common nomenclature, an Apprentice is one who rekindled their Aura, they have to work on growing it as the body will consume it constantly in order to strengthen. Journeyman is the rank where you finally have some excess Aura, and one is taught at that rank how to manipulate it in order to actively boost your physical abilities. The Master rank is when your Aura barely becomes capable of exiting your body, it allows you shield your body with Aura and to imbue inanimate objects in order to improve their quality. And a Grandmaster is a level where most of the cool stuff that you see in fictitious stories happens, flying slashes and such.

Then there is the Transcendent realm, but let’s leave that for later.

As a master, your relative strength is determined simply by how much Aura you have, how well you can control it, whether you have any other miscellaneous abilities that give you peculiar qualities, and the quality of your Aura.

Analyzing all these factors, it is obvious that even though Theodore’s Aura usage, sword skills, and Aura quality are superior to his opponents, he’s still losing. Theodore’s ascension to the Master level was just too recent, and Urith had too much experience.

It was close, however. And as Theodore found himself an inch away from death, his opponent’s blade slicing some of his hair, he realized that he was improving. He’s still running out of Aura, but he found that while he should have died some dozens of clashes ago, he found himself just the slightest bit faster, stronger just when he needed to. He recovered more quickly from blows that should have taken him moments more to do so, and so Theodore was just at the edge of life or death for the whole duration of the fight, the perfect environment for an Aura user to improve.

“Why. Won’t. You. Just. DIE!” Screamed Urith, immensely annoyed at his constant near misses. He harried his opponents with countless blows, putting him in the back foot of the fight. As an aura master himself, he noticed Theodore’s constant improvement, and he realized that the gap between them might not be so large anymore.

And worst of all, this man wasn’t even the strongest of the bunch, with Erling Havenlight still roaming around the castle, killing their people!

The fight went on for a while, but sadly for Theodore, he no longer had any aura to fight with, as then he spent too much shielding himself against the mighty blows of his opponent.

‘Finally!’ Thought Urith as he saw his enemy’s aura dissipate, and he prepared to swing his sword and end this fight for good.